#ablecaw14 Week 16: Gold or Silver

Saturday, January 3, 2015

I have my final manicure for the Finnish(able) Nail Art Challenge to share with you today. The theme for this one is Gold or Silver and I decided to go with silver since I just used gold for my New Year's Eve manicure. I also wanted to do some free hand painting, so here's what I came up with:

I painted my index, ring and thumb nails with one coat of China Glaze One Track Mind and then added some glitter over it from both OPI Snowflakes in the Air and Essie Set In Stones. For my middle and ring fingers I first used three coats of GOSH Holographic. Then I used a small nail art brush and painted the branches with it using also One Track Mind. Finally I did some dots with the same brush and a dotting tool.

I'm always in awe with Kim's nail art on Instagram and I used one of her manicures as an inspiration for the branches. Mine aren't half as pretty as hers as she really does perfect freehand nail art, but at least I tried. I should definitely do more freehand nail art as that's really the only way to get better. Our nail art challenge was really awesome because it encouraged me do some freehand nail art few times, so maybe I'll try do to that more often in the future too.

I haven't used GOSH Holographic for ages since I feel like I need to save it as you can't get it anywhere anymore. But using it made me remember the other reason why I don't really like to wear it too often. It's really one big pain in the butt to apply. You can get it on decently if you use three coats and apply really carefully, but it's really hard. And when I was applying it this time, somewhere in the middle I felt like I would never get it on right since there were so many bumbs and bald spots and everything. Oh well, I managed, but I'm pretty sure I won't be using it anytime soon again...

On the other hand, China Glaze One Track Mind is just one pretty perfect polish! It was sooooo easy to apply and I only needed one coat for full coverage. The color is really beautiful also, quite dark, but you can still see that it's blue and not black. It's really great one, I love it!

Sally Hansen Nail Rehab

IsaDora Peel Off Base (under the glittery nails)

Orly Bonder (under GOSH Holographic)

China Glaze One Track Mind 1 coat (+the freehand painting)

GOSH Holographic 3 coats

OPI Snowflakes in the Air 1 coat

Essie Set In Stones 1 coat

Mereneid Top It All top coat

So yeah, this was the end of #ablecaw14 challenge for me. I have really enjoyed this challenge and it did what it was supposed to do: challenged me to do way more nail art than I would have normally done. I will do a little recap post about the whole challenge later, so there's still one post left to do about it.